Our Arrival

Our journey began on Tuesday, Jan 10. We had been staying with Dan’s parents, and that morning they helped us get down to Chicago to fly out of Ohare. We met up with my parents, Lou and Cheryl Regnerus, at the airport, and they travelled with us to our new home. The flights went quite well. Our first flight was 15 hours, and we were all pleasantly surprised at how well the kids did. They all slept a good amount and were easy to occupy while awake. Little Charity did amazing…slept a lot with very little fussing! We had a 3 hour layover in Taipei and then a short flight to Manila, landing there around noon on Thursday. Rev Daniel and Sharon Kleyn were there to pick us up; we loaded up all our stuff and headed to our house. We were all suffering some serious jet lag of course and it was especially difficult to keep the kids awake! But, we made it through and now here we are, 10 days later and doing well! The past week and a half has been a bit of a whirlwind of activity. Unpacking and sorting all of our stuff, adjusting to the new time zone (we are 13 hours ahead of MI where we came from, by the way), and starting to adjust to the new culture. On top of that, we had a bit of a barrage of illnesses, mainly in the kids, so that added a bit to our tiredness and difficulties. But, we are doing very good now! We think we’re all adjusted and over jet lag, and most of our stuff is unpacked and put away. We also were able to get out and check out a few things while my parents were out; we made a few different trips to the mall/store, visited Faith Academy (where Gabe will start school in Aug), and of course, went to church. We had a very warm welcome from the saints here at Provident church, which is where we will be the majority of our Sundays. We’ve also gotten to enjoy some Filipino food – delicious!

Having my parents out was a huge help. Not only did they help with kids and moving in, but they helped with a lot of decisions we needed to make. Plus, my dad was able to help with a lot of repairs that our home needed. And of course, Rev and Sharon have been an enormous help as well! They have been very patient with our endless questions (which often get repeated), and have assisted us every step of the way.

After so many months of preparing, it is such a good feeling to finally be here and settling in to our new life. There is so much more that could be said, but I’ll save that for future posts. 🙂 A big thank you to all who have been praying for us and encouraging us. We need and appreciate those thoughts and prayers.

With my parents in front of our house.With the Kleyns – we give thanks to God for their new place in our lives.Sharon’s welcome sign in our house. ❤️Charity has quite the fan following already. 😉

Happy to see you started a blog!! Looking forward to reading your daily updates… 😁 Continued thoughts and prayers for you, Rev, and kids as you adjust to your new home and church family. ~Love from the Kalsbeeks~

Thank you for posting! Love hearing how everything is going. And all those girls around Charity… Hilarious! 😁 Love it!
You guys will continue to be in our thoughts and prayers. Glad things are going well so far.

Pastor keeps you in our congregational prayers here in Limerick. It is exciting to hear that ye have arrived and life is beginning a new for ye. It will be lovely to follow along through your blog. God’s blessing to ye!

Sounds wonderful! Glad you are all there and settled in a little bit. Praying for your family always, so awesome that you are doing this! Keep posting pictures too — we all love to see what it’s like over there!